By Donna Harris // Oil Price Information
Less than half of small and mid-sized bricks-and-mortar retailers of all types accept chip cards at indoor point-of-sale terminals, even a year after the credit card networks’ liability shift, according to a survey this month from The Strawhecker Group.
Gas stations and other merchants had to adopt technology meeting the Europay MasterCard Visa standards for chip card payment by October 1, 2015, to avoid paying chip card-related fraud chargebacks.
By far, the most respondents — 76% — said the biggest challenge involved in the transition to EMV was the time it takes to adopt the technology. Next were technological problems followed by a close third, lack of customer and employee knowledge, the study suggests.
For example, some respondents said the chip payment process is “so much slower” or that in some cases “the customer has to swipe even after it (the card) is dipped” or “people (customers) leave their cards behind.”
Only around half of the retailers with up to $2.5 million in annual sales have point-of-sale terminals designed to accept chip cards, and not all of those terminals are in operation.
Of the merchants with in-store EMV terminals, 92% of the retailers with less than $500,000 in annual sales said they had activated terminals that were in use. For retailers with $500,000 to $1 million in annual sales, that drops to 81% and for those with annual sales of $1 million to $2.5 million, the figure is 85%, reported The Strawhecker Group, a consultancy specializing in electronic payments.
